<Past Articles

Portrait of a Confessed Killer: Part II

In Part II of “Portrait of a Confessed Killer” Nathan Miksch talks to Spirit writer Rob Phelps about the events that lead to the night he killed his former lover, friend and drug cohort Timothy Maguire in Provincetown in October 2003, and makes you wonder—how good can a ham sandwich taste?

by Rob Phelps

Fatal Attractions

Nathan Miksch met Timothy Maguire online in the spring of 2003, just before summer began, and when he was on the second or third day of a meth high feeling “incredibly oversexed.” Maguire was deep into a meth binge himself. Miksch could hardly believe his good fortune meeting this guy. He seemed easygoing, a fun guy to hang out with, and he had killer eyes, blond hair and a handsome face. His body, however, didn’t do much for Miksch. Maguire had been considerably overweight as a kid and his flesh, though soft and smooth, hung loosely off his tall frame. But he had an endless supply of meth. Some of Maguire’s housemates on Conwell Street, says Miksch, were dealers.

Neighbors claim they noticed cars with out-of-state license plates coming and going at odd hours. One neighbor, a former roadie in a rock band, says he believes people should do what they like as long as they don’t hurt anyone. But, he says, “It was a wild house. It was a party house.” He adds that twice he called the police, the second time not 10 days before Maguire’s death to complain about the activity. His view on the matter is, “The cops wanted to net a bunch of people [through the federal investigation] so they let it go on. They didn’t end it. They chose to sit on it. Now here’s a young man that’s dead.” Other neighbors say they wish they had tried to harder to intervene.

Housemate Eric Ovalle, whose brother owned the property, denies all of this. He cites being cleared from a federal investigation as a pretty good indication, and both local and state police officers agree that the house was struck off their list. Ovalle says the neighbors were simply harassing them for having lots of company—not uncommon, he points out, in a vacation town. Another housemate maintains that Miksch was the problem. According to this housemate, Miksch was banned from visiting the house two months before he killed Maguire because the housemates had a bad feeling about what the two were doing together.

After their first meeting, Miksch and Maguire did not have sex with each other again, according to Miksch. They had fun hanging out and talking, going online and inviting other guys to come over and have sex with them. But early on in their friendship, Maguire told Miksch he was in love with him. Miksch didn’t take him seriously. He figured they hardly knew each other. He laughed, Maguire was hurt and Miksch left. They didn’t see other again for about two months. When they met again, Miksch made it clear that he didn’t want to have sex with Maguire. Maguire seemed to accept that, but eventually wanted more. He told Miksch they should be lovers and were meant to be together.

In many ways, Maguire was in as much of a desperate situation as Miksch. He was not HIV positive and there appears to be no history of abuse, but he wrestled his own demons. Adopted by parents much older than his peers’ at school, he dropped out of high school his sophomore year to take care of them as they aged and fell ill. And although Provincetown was literally at the other end of his Rockland, Mass. exit, he never ventured down that road. He stayed in the closet until his early 30s, when he began exploring the Boston club scene. Here he formed a tight group of friends, including a few of his Conwell Street housemates, who called themselves “The Saturday Night Crew.” Those housemates remember Maguire at that time as sweet-natured and shy, with a great sense humor that caught everyone off guard.

Wanting to fit in and be glamorous, Maguire lied to the Crew about his background. After his parents died and they saw the house he grew up in, they understood how confused their friend must be—and why he needed time to catch up as to who he was, the fact that he was gay, and who he wanted to be. Provincetown, that “island of misfit toys,” opened its doors. Ovalle offered to rent him the room at 27b, and Maguire moved in. Trouble was he didn’t find much to do there. He turned to drugs and sex, both of which he found online aplenty. He hardly ever had to leave his room. He could just “order in.” He was having a hard time emotionally and the drugs made things worse. His housemates said he shut them out. The only thing in his life he seemed excited about was Miksch.

“Looking back,” Miksch says, “I can’t even begin to imagine why I didn’t just walk away. I know I should have, but I kept telling myself that he would get over it and we would just be friends.”

But the drugs were so plentiful—and so were the men.

The world that summer shrunk down to Maguire’s 12-by-8 foot room littered with Diet Pepsi cans and dirty ashtrays. The Internet was the lifeline, but it only seemed to connect them to other guys in other similar rooms. Eventually, the two started fighting. But each time Miksch would head for the door, Maguire would get hysterical, begging Miksch to stay and promising to change. Miksch would wait until Maguire crashed and then sneak out to hook up with others he met online. “He would always beg me to come back,” Miksch said, “and I always did, and he started saying things to me like that he didn’t understand how I could fuck a stranger like that, but refuse to touch him. I could never make him understand that I didn’t want him that way and that I never would.”

Miksch wrote Maguire a four-page e-mail that he called a “roadmap” to their relationship. In it, he explained how he and Maguire could navigate each other’s feelings and still be friends. Maguire read it and promised to change. But not long after, Miksch suspected Maguire overdosed him on GHB and “although he swore he didn’t,” Miksch said, “I thought then and am certain now that he ‘had his way’ with me while I was unconscious. At the time, though, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and just refused to do that particular drug with him alone again.”

Twice that summer Miksch was admitted to Cape Cod Hospital. The first time, he had overdosed. The second, he wanted to clean up and start to get his act together. After his first admission, he returned to Provincetown and stayed clean for three or four days. Then he got online and found a party. After the second time, Maguire left his room, borrowed a car and picked him up. Before they left the hospital parking lot, Maguire pointed to a backpack at Miksch’s feet. Inside was a bag of magic crystals, a pipe and a butane lighter. The party was on.

But by the end the summer they both tried to kick meth. Miksch would hole up in his room at the AIDS support group residency and try to only see friends who weren’t users. Not surprisingly, somehow he’d always wind up back online looking for the party. For his part, Maguire got a job working at a local convenience store, getting out of that little room. During this time, Maguire’s roommates believe that he was clean, and the coroner’s report backs them up, revealing no evidence of meth in Maguire’s body. Miksch’s attempts to kick meth only lasted a few days each time, but both were trying to get clean as they headed into the fall.

Then, in late October, Miksch went to Providence with a friend. On the way, they stopped and Miksch bought a lottery ticket. As they drove along, he scratched it and won $100. The two went to a bathhouse, where Miksch bought a big room so he could stay as long as he liked. It was like a casino—windowless, day and night blended together into a seamless semi-dark void.

He bought drugs, too. He did them and wanted more. Discovering he only had $15 and the lottery ticket in his pocket, he went around asking people if they’d cash it for him. No one would. At some point, he fought with his friend and lost his ride home. At about 2 a.m., he left the bathhouse to find a convenience store to cash his lottery ticket, but it turned out he had purchased it in Massachusetts and no one in Rhode Island would take it. Stumbling around Providence in the rain, he was led to a homeless shelter, where he was given a corner and a blanket to wait out the night. But he was too wired to sleep.

The next morning he took a cab to the first place in Mass-achusetts that would cash his ticket, which happened to be a liquor store. He took a bus back to Providence, bought more drugs and hooked up with a guy. Out of money again, he called a friend in Provincetown, who wired him money to get back. After the bus ticket, he had enough left over to buy Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which he tried to read on the ride home.

Five days after he left, Miksch returned, without having slept, to Provincetown on Friday, October 24. He still had drugs, and he did them. He went to friends for more sex and drugs. Then, out of drugs, he and Maguire found each other online. Miksch thought it would be nice to see a friendly face, and with the promise of drugs from Maguire and all the housemates out of town, no more invitation was needed. The party began with a chug of Jack Daniels, which hit his dehydrated, exhausted and emaciated body hard. He promptly passed out.

Maguire later told Miksch that while he was passed out he writhed on the bed, basically “having sex with the bed,” and that it had turned Maguire on. Miksch thinks Maguire may have put something in the Jack Daniels. “As many can probably tell you,” he says, “a drink and a half is hardly enough to put me under the table generally. Of course, I hadn’t eaten much of anything in five days, and my meth habit being what it was, I was kind of out of the habit of drinking a lot.”

Miksch slept for a couple of hours but awoke to find Maguire gone and himself now dressed in nothing but a pair of Maguire’s baggy cotton pants. Next to the computer was a new bag of meth and Maguire’s pipe. Miksch got high right away, and soon Maguire returned. He laid on his bed, flipping through the channels on TV and the two chatted. Maguire teased Miksch about being a “big whore” and Miksch pulled a belt off the floor and threw it at Maguire, who flipped it around his neck, playing with it while the two talked. Miksch said Maguire was acting smug about something. He pressed him and Maguire said that while Miksch was passed out he had raped him. Miksch thought he was just playing with him at first, but when he realized he was serious, he changed into his own clothes, slammed another drink and headed for the door.

Starting to cry, begging Miksch to stay, Maguire barred the door. Miksch was shaking now. Years of abuse, of being taken advantage of boiled up. He tried to get past Maguire. His friend wouldn’t move. He grabbed the belt around Maguire’s neck and used it to pull him down on the bed.

“I was choking him, but I was more trying to move him out of the way,” Miksch said. “I was 5’6”, 140 pounds to his 6’4”, 250 pounds and it didn’t go the way I expected. He basically ended up on top of me, and try as I might to pull him over my body so I could escape, I could not. So I let go, aware that I had probably hurt him and sure that he would let me leave. He wouldn’t though. He cried and coughed, and said he was sorry and told me I had hurt him saying, ‘Isn’t that enough?’ but he wouldn’t let go of me. When I grabbed the belt again I blacked out. When I came to he was dead, and his head was lying in my lap. I panicked. I thought I should call the police, but was afraid of them [since I’d been] raped back in 1998 and had gone to them for help. They treated me very badly, calling me a liar and harassing me at work. I certainly didn’t think they would help me in the situation I was in.

“The idea to hide his body or to run ran through my mind,” Miksch said. “I even went so far as to sever his arm, thinking I could take him out of his home in pieces and bury him somewhere. However, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, bloody and terrified and became aware of the depths to which I had sunk. I knew I could go no further. I was going to kill myself, run, or turn myself in.

“In the meantime,” he said, “I put his body into his closet, barricaded the door, and got high nonstop all day. I even invited a guy over from the Internet just to be with me. I felt myself slipping over the edge and I was desperate for human comfort.”

“By 10 Saturday night, I was out of drugs and booze, so I decided to go to the liquor store, but I got there too late. So, instead,

I went to the Little Bar to get shit-faced. There I ran into my very dear friend Tim Hazel, who knew something was wrong but couldn’t get me to tell him what. He took me to his home and comforted me. I never told him what I had done, and he never asked. He was just there for me in the way he always was: silent, comforting with no expectations or demands. I stayed there until the police took me into custody.”

As for Maguire’s arm being found in the dumpster, Miksch says he doesn’t even know where there is a dumpster in Provincetown. He says he left the arm in Maguire’s room. Perhaps the answer to that will come out in the trial, which is scheduled to begin shortly after this issue goes to press.

Trials and Tribulations

If Miksch needed anything his entire life, it was a home. Not a house, but a home. Someplace that was always there and safe.

Today, he finds himself each and every morning at the Barnstable County House of Corrections. Set back in the rolling, wooded hills of Otis Air Force Base in Bourne, the grounds could be a state park. Inside, it’s 24-hour florescent lights. The tubes are only dimmed at night. Inmates hang T-shirts on the bars of the cells to help them sleep but guards make them pull them down.

The visiting room is cold as a morgue. Its walls are cinderblock, painted white. Every surface is scrubbed like a hospital. Nathan Miksch sits on a metal stool bolted to the floor behind a thick glass window. Over the nearly two years he’s been in jail awaiting trial, he’s gained back the weight he’d lost doing meth, which contains the same active ingredient as over-the-counter diet pills. Actually, he’s regained about three times the weight he’d lost. With his cropped brown hair and scruffy face, he looks like a teddy bear in a bright orange jumpsuit. His face is full, his complexion ruddy.

Over a monitored phone, he explains why his eyes are so red. He’s having a hard time getting saline for his contact lenses. He’s asked for it at the infirmary and was told to buy it from the PX cart. The PX sent him back to the infirmary. This has happened before. He goes back and forth until he breaks down; then, “magically,” he says, a bottle appears in his cell.

Why doesn’t he just get glasses? The only frames on the PX cart are heavy black ones. He says they make him look like a “psycho killer.” That’s not the impression he hopes to make on the jury, obviously. He’s worried about his defense of diminished mental capacity at the time he killed Maguire. Miksch can barely get a bottle of lens solution. Can he get the psychiatric evaluation vital to make his case and get the treatment he needs?

What about Maguire? Did he get the treatment he needed? Horror is the only way to describe the way Miksch feels about what he did. He knows he’s going to prison. He says he deserves that. He says that he feels remorse for other things too. He’s angry with himself for doing “so many things I shouldn’t have done” throughout his life. “So many poor choices I made,” he says.

“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t replay this scene in my head over and over, trying to figure out what I could have done differently, but I just don’t know,” he says. “I realize I’m going to prison and I’m okay with that. Hell, it’ll probably be the best thing that ever happened to me. Sobriety is strange, and it’s hard, but I know I can never go back to being what I was before. I never want to be that desperate and afraid again as long as I live. I would give anything in the world to take back what I’ve done, but I know I can’t and that nothing I ever say or do will make that okay. For now, I just try to take it a day at a time.”

He has yet to get treatment for the endless trauma of his life—treatment that might help him make sense of his life and his choices. And chances are, he won’t get it—ever. The disorientation of trauma and the powerful effects on how it rewires the brain is known, but the state penal system does not offer cutting-edge psychotherapeutic rehabilitation. So, Miksch sits afraid of how he’s self-medicated the wounds of his childhood with alcohol and drugs. Since he’s been in jail, he asked a friend to research and send information on crystal meth. Only seven percent of crystal addicts do not reuse, he says. Abstinence is so tough, he’s learned, because meth rewires the brain so that sex and other desires must be filtered through its use. He hasn’t heard of any research that shows whether the brain can regain its natural connection to pleasure.

Asked if there’s anything that gives him joy these days, even just to fantasize about, he takes a pause. Long and hard. Finally, he says, “Ham sandwiches.” They don’t serve ham sandwiches in jail, but when he goes to the courthouse for scheduling hearings, they bring in a plate of sandwiches from the restaurant across the street. He wishes his mom—or someone—had made him more ham sandwiches when he was younger. But at least Nathan Miksch can finally say—admit—he likes a good ham sandwich.

It’s a start.